Any South Dakota pheasant reports?

Mobridge area. Been there twice before.
We'll be in Mobridge end of the month and then again in mid-November (which is our normal time frame - so the earlier season conditions will be pretty new to us).

Word on bird counts from our landowner friend is "better than last year, not as good as normal". Last year was decent, so thats a good sign.

I'll put a quick report up when we get back.
 
Heading out next week to Northeast portion of SD for ducks and pheasants, can't wait! Report from a friend in the area is beans are almost all out and corn is about 50% out. Warm dry weather through the weekend should keep the corn coming out at a good pace.
 
Hunted the se corner for the resident opener and been out a few times since. Its "decent" is about right. Havnt seen birds in every field, all public, but able to get birds every day.
 
Hunted the opener in NE part of the state, found them in the cattails but it was windy and chilly so that could have had something to do with that.
 
We'll be in Mobridge end of the month and then again in mid-November (which is our normal time frame - so the earlier season conditions will be pretty new to us).

Word on bird counts from our landowner friend is "better than last year, not as good as normal". Last year was decent, so thats a good sign.

I'll put a quick report up when we get back.
Got back from SD yesterday. Mobridge area was excellent. Numbers were high and cover is decent. I’d say over 60% of corn is out and they’re making really quick work of the rest.

it hadn’t rained for a month until the other night so it is very dry. Most of our normal cattail sloughs are dry, and our landowner buddies have asked us not to park in tall grass/cornfield corners due to the fire danger. Not sure what that’s going to mean for the later seasons. One of these cattail ponds is usually about 25 acres and it’s dry as a bone (Although very squishy and quicksand-esque as you move in from the edges)

Birds were scattered a bit, which is expected given some standing crops and bluebird weather in the high 60’s/no wind. Since we rarely hunt early in the season it took some getting used to to find slightly different cover than our normal honey holes. Birds were still using the cattails, especially when pushed, but generally were in thinner grass patches near/inside cut corn or sunflowers. Quite a few points in the cut corn itself if it was dirty and weedy enough. Ditch hunting overgrown section roads at dusk was also very productive.
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We spent some time West River on Thursday and Sunday chasing sharptails. Dry over there, also, but not as bad as the other side. I am a sharptail rookie, but numbers seemed great to me and they were holding well (which I understand is not common in late October and gets less common as the season Wears on). My Brit definitely prefers running the prairie versus pounding cattails.

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Headed back in a few weeks. Might spend more time on sharptails depending on the weather.
 
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